Sunday 21 December 2008

That's an adventure

They're going to Burma, wearing brand new adventure shoes sewn by kids somewhere. You point out that nearly all tourism grants legitimacy to the regime, brings in hard currency, and that the locals a re so scared of the secret police that they'll never have an authentic rapport to you. Now you've broken the pleasantness. But nevermind. Soon they'll be going back to Paris and their two weekas in climatised coaches funded by, and funding the dictature will have turned them into Burma experts. The population really wants contacts with the West, they tell you...

Friday 19 December 2008

Overheard on the phone

Dany: Saying the rosary, it's like typing up your bibliography. It's boring but strangely soothing, in a way.

The Local Icon of Christ: [speechless]

Thursday 11 December 2008

The big sin meme: too busy

In the last few weeks, I've been on the receiving hand of people being "to busy" to interact with me when I needed them. It hurts to realise just how low I rate on someone else's list of priorities. Low, very, very low...
But if I'm being honest, I have to acknowledge that I have been even less considerate than these guys towards nearly evrybody in my life. I had every desire to be available, and mostly they understood, but I realise just how infrequently I've given someone the gift of my time and full attention.
I think it is my responsibility to structure my life so I wont' be "too busy". The much touted virtue of hospitality requires it.

Sunday 7 December 2008

A clean slot

I've realised that I would rather say "it's forgotten" than "I forgive you". In human, day-to-day relationship, we never really know what forgiveness means. But a clean slot, that's pretty clear.
I can't remember where I read it, but someone wrote that forgiveness implies treating the offender as if the offense had not taken place, their status fully restored.
Obvioulsy, I'm not thinking about the implications of such a statement in each specific case, and I am not advocating that someone remain in an abusive relationship as a result of repeatedly restoring the offender's status.
But forgiveness, as a word, is just too vague: it can mean anything. I wish I could find a good book about it.

Saturday 29 November 2008

Intensity of the monetarised economy

I need to read my economics textbooks all over again. I'm not sure what the formal terminology is for the intensity of the monetarised economy, i.e., the process of bringing more and more of life under a monetary system.
The day-to-day economy of Moldova, for example, hardly used any money back in 2001. Where I live, without money you simply don't eat. This is valid even if you eat at a soup kitchen, which is ultimately funded by people who have jobs in the formal economy, either via donations, or via taxes.
In our apprehension of Mammon, I think we need to take into account just how intensely monetarised our daily-life is. It's one thing to be concerned about money in self-sustained rural Moldova where you don't need it, and it is another to be concerned about money in some parts of county Durham where you need it to live.
I'm just upset because the introduction of a monetarised economy on the shore of lake Victoria meant that the Nile Perch became internationally profitable and now countless Western mothers have blogs with pictures about how to cook filets of Nile perch.
Of course, the population on the shores of Lake Victoria which produces them does not work in the fish-processing factories and cannot afford the fish. It can barely afford the fishs' heads, if it's got any bit of money that is. And to get it? Well, there's always prostitution.
In fact, the whole situation is even worse... The fish heads need smoking, and as a result many of the area's trees have been chopped off. What's more, in order to transport the fish to Europe, investors look for the cheapest planes... Russian planes... which, on their way from Russia to Africa bring over discarded Russian weapons for whover happens to want them, and we know who that is.
This fish is the evilest thing on the planet, I promise. I know I'm only blogging about it years after everybody else blogged about Darwin's Nightmare, but this is just unbelievable.
Here are two statements from the documentary's director:
It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores.

It seems that the individual participants within a deadly system don't have ugly faces, and for the most part, no bad intentions. These people include you and me. Some of us are "only doing their job" (like flying a jumbo from A to B carrying napalm), some don’t want to know, others simply fight for survival.

When it comes to deeds

In 2001, I was living in central Madrid with Adriana, a 55 year old diva (for real, a singing diva!). We didn't get along too well. I think she was a bit bitter that she had to take in someone new to make the rent, she was dead-set on not letting me change any of the decoration, and we had different standards of hygiene. It was not a catastrophically conflictual situation either, but on occasions we passed like ships in the night rather than really share the place. A few times we ate together, I gave a her a couple of massages, and she once borrowed my version of Pie Jesu to train for a concert she had to give.
Adriana really didn't strike me as the most kind-hearted person on the planet, and definitely not a do-gooder. Yet her situation in artsy, marginal Madrid during the Movida (and before) meant that her friends had taken the brunt of the 1980's Aids crisis. Because the "artsy" community is extraordinarily transient and noncommital, Adriana became one of the few permanent fixtures. As it happens, when two or three of her friends became ill from Aids, she was the one to visit them every day, bring them food, and hold their hand when they were dying. I had moved in about three weeks after the last one had died, and I only found out much later.
My aunt doesn't have the best reputation on the maternal side of my family. Emotionally speaking, she's rather harsh and can be hurtful. I suspect she makes up stories a lot of the time too. She's not instantly likeable in a "cute movie" sort of way. She's also outwardly religious. Because she lived near my grandfather, she took responsibility for his well-being, coming to have lunch with him, driving him to hospital, etc. before he died in June. And this despite the fact that my grandfather used to beat her, threw her out of the house at 19, and never ceased to express his fondness of her younger sister, my mother.
After the death, my mother did not want to sell the house, to which she was very attached, while my aunt needed the money for her projects to move down South. In the course of a few months, she not only processed the hurt of having been beaten and thrown out of the house as well as that of losing her father after having done all of the caring, she also put her projects on holds (she's in her mid 60's) so that my mother, the baby, would have the time to grieve.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

Parents of angels

“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.”
This is my third post about Sandra’s blog and I’m still not linking. I think I’m afraid of being traced back by her. By comparison, my own blog seems like a collection of irrelevant musings, and the last thing she needs is someone pontifying from a “Christian” perspective. I don’t think there is anything that Christians can say to a mother they don’t personally know whose 28-month old son died before her eyes. I would find it indecent to draw her attention to this place, even indirectly.

But increasingly, I realise that her blog involves 100 times more pistis than mine does. A couple of days ago, she wrote: “it’s so long; it’s so hard to have to wait to see you, to tell myself that I have to wait out my whole entire life for the hope of, one day, just hold you in my arms again”. In French culture (and surely in other Western cultures as well), parents whose children have died refer to themselves as parents of angels. Their children might have become angels, but the adults left on Earth are still their parents and the relationship remains, in which the kids still love their parents, care for them and even need their love, to an extent.

I really, really love the orthodox understanding that the Church is all the living and all the dead, together assembled before God, at any time. And I believe that there is not better example of this than the inter-status love displayed by Sandra. She and her son are one of the most visible manifestations of the Church eternal.

Type B

For a little while now, I have been dating a former high-profile lawyer turned diocesan super-priest whom everybody believes will be a bishop in no time. I’m also in the final days of writing up my PhD. My high-achiever boyfriend does not see what the big deal is. He does try, but at the end of the day it’s just a piece of written work, right? Today, a computer scientist came to fix my computer. He was extremely shy, sweet and soft-spoken, with a foreign accent I couldn’t place. A minute after he left, I dissolved into tears and found myself longing for an environment in which the high expectations were gone and we could all be shy, sweet and soft-spoken.

Saturday 22 November 2008

Scattered thoughts

Indulgence without repentence. Jesus is my best buddy. I’m sure he’ll understand. I’m sure he likes me as I am. Loses the meaning of grace. Like fresh water on my red-hot shame. Indulgence without repentence, a take-away coffee and a cinnamon bun, while the world burns. I’ve said it before, the only grace there is the grace that changes your life. And it’s the only one I want.
My church is in the business of embodying indulgence, and maybe it is right. For if the people know little, they sure should know that. God’s grace will flow their way, no matter what. Food for the babes. So we live without the burn, we live without the scream, there is no way we’re entering this mighty wall of flames. Until someone we love will lure us into it. Life begins in purgatory.

Friday 21 November 2008

(Obvious) parallels

If willfully ignoring the WWII holocaust turned people into unspeakable assholes, then willfully ignoring the holocaust in the DRC turns us into unspeakable assholes. In fact, we may know more than they did.
And yet, appart from supporting NGOs, I've no idea what we can do. Sometime I feel so utterly disempowered that I wonder if I'm not uncounciously wishing that there was nothing I could do. In a way, that would be sort of convenient. Hey, I'm a nice girl. I even say it when a cashier operator gives me back too much change, and do I ever...

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Life in the mainstream: loneliness online

Quand l'écran s'allume je tape sur mon clavier
Tous les mots sans voix qu'on se dit avec les doigts
Et j'envoie dans la nuit
Un message pour celle qui
Me répondra OK pour un rendez-vous

Message électrique quand elle m'électronique
Je reçois sur mon écran tout son roman
On s'approche en multi
Et je l'attire en duo
Après OK elle me code Marylou

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Quand j'ai caressé son nom sur mon écran
Je me tape Marylou sur mon clavier
Quand elle se déshabille
Je lui mets avec les doigts
Message reçu OK code Marylou

Quand la nuit se lève et couche avec le jour
La lumière vient du clavier de Marylou
Je m'envoie son pseudo
Mais c'est elle qui me reçoit
Jusqu'au petit jour on se dit tout de nous

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Quand l'écran s'allume je tape sur mon clavier
Tous les mots sans voix qu'on se dit avec les doigts
Et j'envoie dans la nuit
Un message pour celle qui
A répondu OK pour un rendez-vous

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Michel Polnareff

(I really like Polnareff, because he's frequently quite vulnerable and "needy", and sometimes his stuff is just plain cathartic. Goodbye Marylou is one such song in which he almost beats Wim Wenders' 1980's sensibility. Polnareff can also be credited for introducing Christian universalism to the quasi totality of the French population, with the hilarious song On ira tous au paradis, [lyrics here])

Wednesday 12 November 2008

Less magic

The universe has lost its magic. I think I stopped believing in a God that would intervene in the physical world all that much, and, as a result, the world seems a lot less safe. I think the miracle narratives are valuable not so much because people were getting cured of various ailments, but because they show that the Lord cares, and that his love is inconditional.
I'm a bit ashamed to say that, for a period, I used to read plenty of little signs here and there. But after reading Sandra's blog, I have taught myself not to. "So God would send me a sign that I may after all survive my PhD, and not delay by a milisecond the deathly car accident that took Sandra's two-year old?" Well, maybe not.
But anyway, the world still felt empty with or without direct divine intervention. Even the experiential God was hard to sense, for me it was a totally new way of relating to the Divine...
This yukky dry spell did not go away. But the other night I think I grasped why. It's all well and good to have my own sense of God. But of the people around me might have another. I think I was being introduced into someone else's experiential landscape, someone fairly close to me.
I realised that it was no help being on my little Quaker cloud when the people I love are not on it with me. And so I embrassed this dry spell for the time being. This all happened in one split second though. Next thing I knew I was back on the dry spell.
At school, during tests, one of our teachers used to ask: how's the grub? We used to grumble something mildly annoyed in way of a response. I sometimes picture God asking the same question.
(On this empathetic note, I'm actually happy to report that another mum who also lost her baby and who lives close-by has gotten in touch with Sandra. They've met a few times. She'd never mentionned anyone like this before, or any kind of support system solid enough to cope and not disintegrate in the face of this tragedy. I don't know Sandra at all, but I was devastated by her divorce. Blogs are a funny thing.)

Saturday 8 November 2008

God's poetry

"I tried to write a poem in Mandarin about you. I wanted to make you understand how I feel. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t. I tried for days. The more I wrote, the more empty my words sounded. At first I felt panic; I could not sleep for many nights. But then the pain would go away every time I saw your face, or just heard your voice.

I used to write poetry because to me, it was like writing a letter to God. To tell someone I couldn’t see how I felt inside. Then finally God replied with a poem more beautiful than anything I had ever written. He gave me you. You are my poetry from God, Orked. Let me hear your voice. Please call me. I’ll be waiting. Please call me, Orked, so I can sleep peacefully again."
From Sepet.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

This cracks me up

Click for larger picture...


Note: I'm having trouble finding the source of this cartoon. I basically found it while looking for something else, then forgot about it, then today looked for it again with a couple of keywords in Google Image. Google links to a blog, but once on the blog I could not find the pic, so I don't know who the author is. Please leave a comment if you do.

Monday 3 November 2008

Sunday morning...

"Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."

Francis Bacon

Friday 31 October 2008

To love virtue...

Repeatedly, I've observed a well-established culture of loving "creatures comfort" in some Christian circles and I'm somewhat ambivalent towards it. I'm referring to liking good food, good wines, good hotels, trips abroad, great jewelry and that sort of stuff. Virtue, it seems, is something that is done because we have to, but deep down, we think it sucks.
Wait a minute, I thought: does anyone here love virtue? It seems to me that engaging in the messy business of being fully alive is way more interesting than many of the things just mentionned. People, this is the Holy Grail, this is the Life Abundant, wake up!
On the same day, I opened one of my most questionnable and devilshly uber-Machiavellian books, Robert Greene's The Art of Seduction. On some levels, I really like this book because it brilliantly exposes many the motivations of modern Western women and men. Seduction, then, simply amounts to fulfilling the desires for which people long, and Robert Greene has quite an extensive catalogue, full of trenchant observations.
Yet, each time I open The Art of Seduction, I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis' answer when asked if he would write some more Screwtape letters. He said no. What's more, he said, pinpointing the operative logics of Hell is fairly easy and it's not productive to the Christian agenda. The real art would be to make an equally compelling book about the operative logics of Heaven.
Anyway, in one chapter, Robert Greene was discussing the longing to escape virtue. He argues that most people are reluctantly leading moral lives, but they wish they didn't. What is seductive is the impression of a person (or an environment) that doesn't follow the moral life of being reasonnable, of giving to charity and that kind of stuff, but instead just indulges.
So now, the moral life has been reduced to a guilt-trip-inducing shadow constantly hovering over us. Things we should do... things we really should do... but keep pushing into some undefined future.
So my question remains: does anyone out there love virtue? Like C.S. Lewis's unwritten book about the logics of Heaven, I find it relatively easy to pinpoint the problem, and much harder to write down the solution. So the post stands unwritten. I read these lines and I'm thinking about the post that should be. I'm pregnant with things to say, but I don't know what they are. I guess I'd like to write the operative logics of Heaven. This is my closest attempt so far.

Sunday 26 October 2008

Ma Liberte

This is possibly my number one favourite song. I've known it since childhood, as it is often taught in French schools. One of my long term penpal and holiday friend taught it to me one summer, when we were about 10. The lyrics are absolutely haunting. But in truth, I'm just glad that someone wrote a song about the end of freedom.
And I'm happy that French schoolkids learn the depth of these spooky melancholy love songs when they're young. For some reason, we think it's fine. Later on, we're glad the songs have become part of our psyche, and we all grow up to become amazing French lovers, I guess.

Ma liberté
Longtemps je t'ai gardée
Comme une perle rare
Ma liberté
C'est toi qui m'as aidé
A larguer les amarres

My freedom
For so long i have kept you
Like a rare pearl
My freedom,
It's you who helped me
To set sails

Pour aller n'importe où
Pour aller jusqu'au bout
Des chemins de fortune
Pour cueillir en rêvant
Une rose des vents
Sur un rayon de lune

To go pretty much anywhere
To go to the end, at last
of all the hazardous roads
To pluck, while dreaming
The odd desert wind rose
On a ray of the moon

Ma liberté
Devant tes volontés
Mon âme était soumise
Ma liberté
Je t'avais tout donné
Ma dernière chemise

My freedom,
To your every whim
My soul was enslaved
My freedom,
I had given you everything
My last shirt.

Et combien j'ai souffert
Pour pouvoir satisfaire
Tes moindres exigences?
J'ai changé de pays
J'ai perdu mes amis
Pour gagner ta confiance

How much did I suffer
To try to satisfy
All your exigencies?
I changed countries
I lost my friends
To earn your trust

Ma liberté
Tu as su désarmer
Mes moindres habitudes
Ma liberté
Toi qui m'as fait aimer
Même la solitude

My freedom,
You have destroyed
All of my habits
My freedom
You taught me how to love
Even solitude

Toi qui m'as fait sourire
Quand je voyais finir
Une belle aventure
Toi qui m'as protégé
Quand j'allais me cacher
Pour soigner mes blessures

You made me smile
When beautiful times
Were coming to an end
You protected me
When I sought to hide
To heal my wounds

Ma liberté
Pourtant je t'ai quittée
Une nuit de décembre
J'ai déserté
Les chemins écartés
Que nous suivions ensemble

My freedom
Despite all, I left you
One December night
Forever I gave up
The odd and exciting roads
Which we treaded together

Lorsque sans me méfier
Les pieds et poings liés
Je me suis laissé faire
Et je t'ai trahie pour
Une prison d'amour
Et sa belle geôlière

I wasn't paying attention
When, my hands and feet tied
I didn't resist.
I betrayed you
For a prison of love
and its beautiful jailer.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

An open letter to the GAFCON enthusiasts

Reading through some comments on the Jerusalem declaration, I’m bound to notice that I don’t even like a lot of churchy people. What is the point of travelling to the GAFCON conference on your own expense as a lay person, and then step up on some hyped-up podium to affirm that you are thrilled to have contributed to saving Anglicanism from dangerous unorthodoxy. Then what is the point of affirming, from your position of affluent privilege, that Jesus died the death we deserved? So my little sister deserves to be tortured to death? Says who? Wait a minute, I remember you. You’re the one that affirms that Gandhi is in hell. I’m very glad that I’ve very rarely been exposed to the fucked up theology that dwells in your head. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m not feeling very well.

Saturday 18 October 2008

Book review: Romero, A Life by James R. Brockman

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm only halfway through this book, which I picked up in an Oxfam bin some weeks ago, but I feel compelled to review it already. Romero, A Life is a re-edition of a 1982 books entitled The Word Remains, A Life of Oscar Romero.
I had picked it up in order to round up my knowledge of Liberation Theology and I got a lot more than I bargained for. The book is extraordinarily contextual and practical. It reminds me of Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist, but this time the issue is linked to Land Reforms in El Salvador. In short, the campesinos had no land and no resources, while a few families of large landowners were growing sugar cane for profit in giant fields, on the best land.
The book, because it is written by a serious researcher, exposes numerous chunks of material: the homilies of the priests of that time, the letters sent to Romero by the campesinos, excerpts from the reactionary press and its attempts to drag the Church back to the pre-Vatican II and Pre-Medellin apolitical position they knew.
I absolutely love this material, it makes Liberation Theology come alive in a way in which no other book had done for me before. It does not contain theories, and zero exortations for the reader: all the examples refer to things that were done practically, and words that were practically spoken from the pulpit by the protagonists of the time.
This book is an extraordinary resource. For the first time, I felt that Liberation Theology was not some vague flavour which we sometimes notice in the writings of some contemporary authors, it was not a beautifully written book which tries to convince a scholarly audience of the value of the Church of the Poor. Liberation Theology was done on a daily basis.
In the El Salvador of the late 1970's, it was everywhere. Going to church in that period was a totally different experience than the stuff we are exposed to these days. And Brockman, writing in 1982, does a grand job of transporting the reader into that period: if you had been there, that's what you would have heard preached; if you had been there, that's what you would have read in the paper; if you had been there, that's what you would believe about God, and about Salvation.
There are too many chunks of great material in this book for me to cite them all, but I'm happy to re-type one of them, in this instance, an exerpt from a series which the Jesuits of the time published in a national newpaper (before the national newspapers stopped accepting articles from them):
The church is trying to be faithful to the example of Christ, making itself one of the dispossesed and sharing their lives. The church is becoming displeasing and distressing for those who have privileges and economic power. The church preaches the good news and proclaims the truth, and that truth is disturbing. The Church interprets in the light of the good news the concrete situation that it lives in, and its word causes indignation. The church -that is, Christians- tries to live in agreement with the good news, and its behaviour surprises and angers. The church speaks of justice, and they say it preaches hatred. The church concerns itself for the dignity of the poor, and they say it promotes fratricidal struggles. The church tries to better human society, and it is accused with fury of meddling in what does not concern it. The church, like Jesus, tries to give preference to the poor and deprived, the great majority of Salavadorans; but curiously when it does so they say it is harming the country.
When that kind of material starts appearing in you local broadsheet, please remember to give me a shout.
Incidentally, this book also reconciled me with the profession of academic researcher. I'd always thought that the only sources worth reading were the protagonists: the liberation theologians themselves, the liberationist bishops themselves. Everything else was secondary literature. But let it be said that some secondary literature is awesome, and so well researched that I doubt even our prestigious protagonists could have done much better. Brockman has written an important page of the history of the Universal Church, I hope it doesn't disappear into oblivion. Apparently, Romero, A life is re-edited on a very regular basis, so there is hope.

Friday 17 October 2008

Dany's first dabs at soteriology

It seems that all of my views of the issue are non-standard. I used to really hate this topic and refuse to even talk about it. There isn't a visual cross in all of this blog and there won't be, how about wearing a replica electric chair around your neck as well? But anyway, the proponents of some of the most questionnable theories of the atonement have no such qualms, and they teach their own view as the only view there is. So as someone with a grand total of zero hours of theology under my belt, here are my own two pence:

1. For a start we don’t really know. We cannot know. Claiming to understand God is ridiculous, it would be like my cat claiming to understand me. We can assume that Jesus knew what he was doing, and that his death does what he says it does.

2. The martyr option. Jesus refused to play by the rules of the empire of his day. He was really undermining them, and suffered the fate of those who did likewise.

3. The inhabiting human suffering option. God does not wish to remain privileged while we suffer.

4. Showing whose side God is on. God is with the ones you despise and torture.

5. Becoming vulnerable. You’re pissed off at God and you want to hurt Him? Go ahead. God is vulnerable, hurting him has been done before and it can be done now.

6. Freedom from fear (the Gandhi option). If your enemies want to exert force, let them. It is your fear that keeps them in power. When fear is gone, and you are able to absorb the blows and return only love, you undermine the foundations of violence.

Conspicuous by their absence from my little list are all the variants of Penal Substitution, Ransom and Christus Victor, which are accepted by quite a few churches while little heretic me refuses to even link to them.

Sunday 12 October 2008

Good questions!

Okay, I hope this is still fair use and not simple content lifting, but below are some of the very good questions asked by random internet surfers on the site of the Alpha Course (UK), which set up a survey asking: "If God did exist, what would you ask?".
I think that the site is quite well-made, as every question is boxed in separately, so it creates an impression of the solitude of each asker, while at the same time, listing them together in one place emphasises the common humanity of all who asked. Quite a few of the questions made me well up. Or maybe it’s the combination of them all, the mix of awe, sadness, anger, vulnerability and just sheer curiosity that is reflected in them.

Have you ever had a girlfriend?

If heaven is so wonderful why does nobody want to die?

Why are some people born into Christian families and some people not?

Can he sort out the current Credit Crisis ?

Why did you put me here? I want to die.

What is the point of wasps?

Is there evidence to support that Jesus body wasn’t stolen but he actually rose from the grave physically?

Why do i feel you even when i struggle to believe?

Will i get a girlfriend?

How many starving third world children could have been helped by the money used to fund the advertising campaign for this site?

What do you want me to do?

Why did one of your angels appear to Myself and my wife on 18TH OCTOBER 2004?

Can i have courage to change?

Why did my baby die?

You do not help people you just watch them die so what is your point in life?

What am i supposed to do with my life?

Is hell eternal torment?

Does the holy spirit make people tremble?

Does life exist on other planets?

What can i do improve myself in other to serve u(God) better?

Do I make you proud?

Why cant i hear you?

Why do all these other people hear and feel god but i dont?

Can you commit suicide?

Why make them rely on blind faith?

Could you explain yourself? About, like everything about the bible, you ,jesus, the earth the universe, heaven everything?

Why did you let me waste my life?

What happens when we die?

I will just say thanks for everything he given me.

For an ice-cream.

Can I and people I know can go to heaven?

What does god say about divorce?

Why did you cause pain and suffering to people in the old testament?

Why did you create parasites that bore into children's eyeballs?

How many people fancy me, or have ever fancied me?

Where is my mum?

Why, when my heart stopped for four minutes while in Afghanistan, did I see nothing?

Why am i not pretty?

Why do [we] have to do what you want?

Is Judas in heaven?

How can I hear you more clearly?

Would you keep me safe on a plane even if i didn’t pray and ask you to?

Where are my car keys?

Can you help me to give up cocaine and find pleasure from other means?

What is love?

Why don't you speak to me? Because I don't hear you when I pray or anything.

Do you approve of evangelism? Surely we should find you in our own ways?

Why did you create it all, not why is it as it is, but why did you do it?

Why have you not just simply come down and said look i'm here so behave?

How do I make the money I want to make?

Why didn't you step in and stop Auschwitz happening?

Do pets go to heaven?

If you love everyone equally, why do you feel the need to send some of us to hell for ever?

When I am on the floor in pain, where are you then?

Do protestants take holy communion?

Why did he allow the tsunami?

What does god think of muslims?

Do you know the future?

For forgiveness and understanding.

Is there a devil?

Should i stay with Seb?

Why have we not found a way to stop using petrol full stop, so that we don't destroy the planet.

What should i do with my wife?

Why did you say in the old testament that gay people should be killed?

Why do you entrust your message to people who are bound to misinterpret it?

Is praying for my non Christian friends and family enough to save them?

Is our destiny preordained?

Is heaven in the sky or is it just a feeling of peace?

Of all the diseases, which is your favourite?

Why should I worship you?

Is my dad ok?

Why am I so weak?

Oh God please can you help my Family reunion case in uk?

Would you like some toast?

Why is there so little charisma to attract people to Christian belief?

Will I go to heaven?

Why do Christians still lie?

Why not come back?

Why has the church become so removed from your original plan?

How can I make up for my past mistakes?

Why Don't You Help Those Children In Africa?

Why were you wrathful and jealous in the Old Testament but then kind and loving in the New Testament?

The effects of global warming are killing the planet, what’s going to happen?

If you let my mum die when I prayed that you would not why would I care if you're with me or not?

If you were real..... would you go for a drink with me ;)

Do i need to go to church to be a Christian?

Why do you need to test our faith?

Is there a plan or me, or do i make it myself?

What can we do to make the world and equal and just place?

Can any of us truly love?

Why should I believe in the existence of Christians?

You are asking all these questions but can we now see the answers too plz!

Am I good enough?

To talk to me :D

Why if miracles have happened why isn't there is no proof of any amputee being cured?
Is the scripture accurate?

What are you more annoyed with: people ignoring your teaching or deliberately misinterpreting it for their own ends

Why may a blind or lame person (Lev 21) not act as a priest? And if they may, why did you not retract the order?

Was jesus REALLY a white person

Why do I procrastinate?

Are there others, alians i mean?

Where is my mum?

Is abortion wrong?

What have you got against gay love?

If Jesus is non judgmental then why will he judge us at the end of time?

Do you believe in brainwashing others into having the same beliefs as each other ?

How would you describe yourself?

Can you help me have a more fulfilled life?

Why can i not stop thinking of you?

What does life after death look like?

Why do some children die in agony often over long periods of time?

Does he really answer your question when u really need him?

Why let men, in your name, kill, mame and slaughter during the inquisition?

Healing for my wife.

When will i get a job?

Why can't my financial blessings be released?

With jesus dieing on the cross how does that take our sins away???

Will i see my father?

I have sinned in the past will my children see my sins on the day of judgement?

Why can't I heal people?

Why do Christians have a relationship with Jesus, why do we need Jesus if we can talk to the head honcho (God)?

How can I communicate with god so that I know he hears me and Im sure of the authenticity of the reply?

If you love me, why do you threaten me with eternal damnation?

When we pray for healing why are some people blessed almost instantaneously and others not at all?

If God did exist, what would HE ask US?

How relevant is paying tithes into the coffers of the church?

Can I have more money please?

How can I help?

Can i have a faith even though i am gay?

If you are a loving God, how could you stand back and allow the Holocaust to happen, or little Madeleine McCann undiscovered?

How could a man be happy in Heaven if their wife was suffering eternally in Hell?

Why does God insist that people waste time worshipping, when they could be doing more important things?

How can our consciousness survive the death and disintegration of our brains?

Wednesday 8 October 2008

How to make a cup of tea on the Sabbath?

This blog is gaining a bit of a nondescript monotheist flavour these days, borrowing liberally from Judaism and Islam, which I love doing, because it's easy to recognise familiar principles, but the expressions always seem so "new" when worded by the followers of another faith. They are a welcome escape from some of the widespread inanities associated with Pop Christianity these days. But anyway, I came across the Lubavitch method for making a cup of tea on the Sabbath. Seriously, go check it out!
(And while I'm at it, Yom Kippur begins on the eve of Thursday the 9th, and that's today, so I really did not pick the best day to have fun with sabbath laws. Maybe I'll do a more serious post sometime along the line. Like my freaking university holding a yearly mandatory training course for all postgraduate instructors... on Yom Kippur)

Sunday 5 October 2008

Pressed to move on...

When a child of a worshiper of Allah dies, Allah inquires from His angels:
'Have you taken into your custody the soul of the child of My servant?'
They answer, 'Yes.'
Then He inquires, 'Have you taken into custody the flower of his heart?'
They answer, 'Yes.'
Then He inquires, 'Then what did My servant say?'
They answer, 'He praised You and bore witness that to Allah we belong and to Him we shall return.'
Upon this Allah will say, 'Build for My servant a magnificent mansion in Paradise and name it: the House of Praise.'"

I just came across the most moving blog I have read in yonks. Sandra lost her toddler to a (preventable) car accident one and a half years ago. While her entourage was extremely supportive at the beginning, it seems like now they are pressing her to move on. She is too phony for them, too raw, too cuckoo. Her marriage fell apart a couple of weeks ago, and now the people who supported her most are starting to engage in some serious backbiting. Sandra feels totally misunderstood and betrayed.

I’m not surprised that most religions consider the loss of a child as the single worst thing that can happen to a human being. And I’m not surprised by the negativity and backbiting that surfaces when people have to deal with this level of tragedy, over a period of time, when they don’t have the skills to process such emotions (and does one ever acquire these?).

I’ve left a comment in support, I hope it’s a good one, but it just breaks my heart to see love flounder in such predictable ways when people need it most, and for the stupidest reasons. Just because it hurts both parents too bad, and they deal with it in different ways. Because they both think the other should be doing things differently. Once again, duration is everything. It's easy to be supportive for a month or two. But after that, "she'd better fucking move on".

The painting is by William Bouguereau. The vierge consolatrice is displayed in my home town of Strasbourg. In real life it is a very tall painting, displayed in a crimson room on its own, and very softly lit. It's absolutely haunting, because it is incredibly sad and incredibly comforting and hopeful at the same time. It feels like the Virgin Mary understands and that nobody will judge you, ever. In truth I'm pretty pleased that this painting should be "ours". Sorry I couldn't find a picture with a better definition on the web. The above quote is by Abd al-Alim al-Ashari.

Friday 3 October 2008

The church building's leaking roof and other considerations

He says that it's a ton of work raising enough money to fix the church building's leaking roof, that the congregation has been working tirelessly to get this sorted, and that the old ladies who did the fundraising are the real footsoldiers of the Church.
He says that running a parish is extemely intensive work, and when you throw in the extra hours you put at the diocese, you're looking at a sixty hour week, while also technically being on call 24/7 to speak to the families of 21-year-olds who die in car crashes, and that kind of jig.
He says that if you ever get some free time during the week, you check up on the people that got married, or brought their infant up for baptism, or had a funeral at your church. And that most of the time they don't want to hear from you, no matter how much they played along before the wedding, baptism or funeral.
He says that reaching out to the poor and the homeless is not his core business and that it cannot be because he's busy and would not be able to do it well. He says if you've got a project then first get the qualifications (or enlist people who have got them), then design your project professionally, then find the funds, then get it endorsed by the diocesan Anglicare, and then bring it up for discussion.
He says he'd be excited to help you make it happen, if you do most of the work. He says he'll back you up but you need to get to it.
I hate it but I don't know why.

Monday 29 September 2008

Further thoughts on Kol Nidre.

When you give up the idealism, you also give up the despair of failing, and maybe the measure of Grace. When you reduce the Gospel to “no sex, no drinks, no swearing and being nice to people”, then morality is mostly something you don’t do. It's relatively easy to keep in line, or to step back in line if you mess up. It's feasible. You can be a sunnyboy (or a sunnygirl) most of the time.
But when you give it its full measure, you’ll fail. By necessity you’ll fail, before you even try. At the moment when you are most resolute, after ten days of soul-searching, you are already failing. There will never be a quick fix; you will never quickly step back in line. Because you never were in line, not even now, and you never will be. Refusing the cop-out of blasé cynicism you throw yourself at it anyway. You can barely mutter your promises but you promise anyway. And your grieving itself is an absolute cry of hope in the infinite mercy of God.
I think that this "absolute cry of hope" was present throughout Israel's journey. At times it was clearer, at times it was submerged by beliefs and practices which locked it away from people. I also think that Jesus spent his time reaffirming it with a vengeance. But maybe that's just my interpretation.


The prayer in Aramaic is often sung to this tune (thanks Wikipedia!)

The Jewish calendar: Rosh Hashanah

Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year (in many respects). It marks the beginning of a ten day period of repentance leading to Yom Kippur. On the eve of Yom Kippur, some branches of Judaism traditionally recite the Kol Nidre, begging forgiveness for the numerous good intentions and wows they will make and (maybe) fail to keep, and for all the times they will let God down.

Friday 26 September 2008

Tintin, the return.

I don't know why I'm leaving my last post up online. I just hate it. I don't have a right to say anything. Yes, nasty exploitation exists. Nobody has to dig very far to find it. And the world doesn't need another privileged Tintin-figure to go and find things out. I wanted to write the carriers' story in order to expose the mechanisms of it: their need for a livelihood, the mafioso profiteers, the dangers of going against the profiteers' interests, the benign shopfront of most of Cuzco's tour offices. As benign as most things we consume. My presence changed nothing and I feel I've exploited them further by telling their story. What a life-enriching "experience" it was!!! It sure as hell didn't enrich their lives. And so this one will be the last of my first-hand accounts.

Thursday 25 September 2008

Freeze your bums in Sandinista style

I remember when Gutierrez’s book came in the mail last year. The picture on the front of that book is a Latin American man carrying a heavy-looking cloth sack. Oh fuck, I thought. The guys I left behind. The guys I did not help. The guys whose bodies kept me warm in the chilly Andean night, on Easter night, in 2000.

It all started at the end of a stay in Chile. I’d planned a week of holiday before going home in order to explore the country a bit. The South was not an option at that time of the year, so I went North. There in the Chilean desert, most of the backpackers were planning to cross into Peru. I was a bit scared of Peru, as it’s supposed to be less safe than Chile, but then I did not want to spend my whole “touristy” week in a desert, so the next morning I crossed into Peru too. I had a look at Arequipa, but then Machu Picchu was only a few hundred kilometres away. It would have been be stupid not to see it.

So I got there and booked a shortened “Inca Trail”. The whole thing lasts four days but I did not have four days, so I did the shortened two-days one. It was all included, food and accommodation were provided, and there was guide with us. He was pleased that I spoke Spanish, and so we spent most of the walk chattering away.
The most disturbing sight on the Inca Trail is the sight of the people who carry the stuff (tents, heavy teapots and the like) because they really carry them in potato sacks, and it looks crazy heavy. Right next to them you see the overweight Americans who carry nothing but their camera.

I asked about the carriers. They earned about one dollar per day. They had to take this job because there was no safety net. Well, but those tourists pay a lot, how come these guys don’t get more, and get better backpacks and lightweight equipment. What about unions?

“If it is even suspected that you are friendly with a union you lose your job. Word goes around and you’ll never work again. It happened to me. I was without a job for six months, without income. I had to grovel to be employed again, I got back in because I’m a good tour guide, but I keep quiet now”.

Now, what if someone was to set up shop in Cuzco, and you know, be a little more “fair-trade” about it all? I mean, it can’t cost that much to set up a tour-guide agency. Beyond renting the shop the initial investment is almost zero. And I’m sure the people who take these tours would be happier to know that the carriers get a better deal.

“You mean you want to set up shop? You’d just get shot. You have no feel for the unwritten rules, there are interests to be protected, and you’re not related to anyone. It’s dangerous shit”.

So how’s it gonna change?

“I don’t know, but I’m not rocking the boat. Well, that’s what I say. In reality I’m still in touch with the Sandinista, or rather I wish I were”

Where are the guys staying overnight?

“We’ve got a separate camp, it’s quite friendly”

Do you think I could stay with you?

“We’ll ask the others”

I made up the lame-assed excuse that I’d spent all day talking to the guide, and had no inclination to sleep with the northern tourists. Mostly, it did not want to sleep in a tent if they didn’t.

“Woa, you’re crazy, you’re going to get ill, it gets really cold, you go sleep in a tent and a sleeping bag. You go join the others, they’ve got a party planned. It’s quite nice.”

I ended up staying; they gave me some of their food. We did not talk for very long, as they were pretty knackered. They made me sleep in the middle. For a while I thought that I was in deep shit, sleeping so close to so many men, their bodies touching mine.

“We understand. But that’s how we sleep. It gets cold, we’ve got no cover. Go sleep further if you want, but if you change your mind later it’s okay too”.

And boy did I freeze, I shivered in my expensive mountain jacket, so I ended up coming closer to the bundle of human bodies. I didn’t sleep much. I watched the stars. I remembered that it was Easter night. The next day I felt pretty rough and nearly died falling off the Huayna Picchu.

And that was it. I fantasised for a bit about how people like me and my buddies could change the situation of the carriers, but there was no way out. Especially not for naïve foreigners who want to “fix it” but are not prepared to live in a country for years before attempting anything. I wish I’d done one thing differently. I wish I’d emptied my bank account –which was pretty depleted at that point of my trip- and given the money to the carriers.

Sometimes, when I can think of nothing else, I think like Paul Lafargue: remove the need for work. If people did not have to take these crap jobs they wouldn’t. The question now is how do we remove the need for those crap jobs?

So now, I’ve got a book cover and a pretty story. I want to say that I feel unspeakable shame but I’m tired of this useless white guilt. For what it’s worth, their bodies once kept me warm. That's not a lot of communion. And that's all I had.

Sunday 21 September 2008

In praise of online forums

A year ago, I joined a very active PhD board. I loved it because if was packed full of people doing PhDs so you could count on pretty insightful board messages, but above all it was also very understanding of the challenges of writing a dissertation and pretty welcoming of every other aspect of life as well. Very often, participants have sent in calls for help which they wouldn't share with their friends and family to the anonymous 24/7 crowd on the boards, and I never cease to be amazed at the level of creative support being offered.
Just five minutes ago, a pseudonymous Canadian saved my formatting ass in real time when I was struggling with footnotes not keeping to the set margins. Basically, I've been able to send in almost any question into that board and get about fifteen great answers almost instantly. Astonishingly, a woman logged in to say that she was getting married today. We sort of knew it because she's mentioned it recently, but I found it odd that she would log in on her wedding day to share it with us, who, at the end of the day, are just a bunch of pixels. Or are we?

La confiture de mures

Comme chaque mois de Septembre
depuis qu’elle n’est plus là
je monterai dans notre vallée…
s’ils veulent m’amener.

A côté de la maison effondrée,
pour elle et pour tant d’autres,
je cracherai sur le lac !,
et le ferai sans pleurer.

Lentement, entre les ruines,
je récolterai sur les ronces
des mûres noires comme ses yeux,
douces à la folie.

Il est fréquent que ma fille
veuille me les rationner:
Père, cette confiture
avec son sucre te convient mal.

Si tu savais qu’en la mangeant
je revois la maison debout,
et sur les lèvres de ta mère
une petite goutte de miel !

Fasse le ciel que tu vives assez
pour découvrir pourquoi
tandis que je tartine la confiture
tu es une autre fois ma petite !

Manuel Domínguez (from this website)
Translated into French by Jean-Claude Dutilh

Saturday 20 September 2008

Overblown catholic devotion

The grandmum of my chidlhood friend had been raised entirely by nuns. Her house was full of reproductions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and that sort of stuff. Sometimes my friend and I would stay with her for a week during the long summer vacations. There was always an atmosphere of deep piety. I've got memories of my friend and I, aged six, crossing ourselves in the car at every roadside crucifx. I tried that with my parents a few times, it freaked them out a little, but they understood that if they tried to say anything, that would just make me want to do it more, so they let it slide.
So anyway, my friend's grandad died, and her grandmum came to live with them. My friend's dad had always been more of a viveur, and not very churchy at all. He had no problem with his wife's education, but that was her thing. When the grandmum started to live with them she brought her devotional practices with her, possibly reinforced by the recent loss of her husband. My friend's dad found this very hard to live with but his wife supported her mum. He became very restless. I remember him having a drink at our house and saying "this is not me".
Eventually, he started thinking about escaping. This was in part enabled by my own parents getting a divorce around that time. Suddenly, it could be done, he could get out. So my friend's mum had to cope with an aging relative and a husband who wanted out. It drove her nuts because she loved her husband and her mum. At that time she behaved pretty phony but still very churchy. She dropped the ball with the kids, and the youngest ones started to behave (relatively) wildly.
Her husband wanted a divorce, but she didn't. He was the only man she'd ever loved, and she could not bear losing him. But he really wanted out, left the home and started an affair. Under French law, you can get a divorce without the consent of both parties if you can prove that you have been separated for six years. So he was staying out of town on purpose, so he could get that divorce. But all the time he didn't live too far, so he could keep an eye on the teenage kids, over whom he had some mild authority.
About two years ago, my friend visited me at my mums'. She noticed the renaissance paintings on the wall, one of the virgin, and one of the donna velata. The donna velata isn't the virgin, it is quite possibly a woman whom Raphael was in love with, but who was married to someone else (hence the veil). I will never forget my friend's fear: not you?!? she asked, visibly scared by the virgin on the wall. She thought I'd gone all devotional too. Don't worry, I said, I just like the aesthetics, it makes me look cultured, and it fits in with the cavernous basement room, but really these are just cuts from a two-euros discounted art book. She looked a bit suspicious. I had noticed the fear, so I asked, why would that be bad? How's your mum?
It turned out that her mum is living is a small flat packed full of devotional paintings and rosaries and that sort of stuff, about twenty miles from our town. Now having lost both her parents, her husband and the kids who think she's gone weird, she's struggling to keep a job. My mum never sees her anymore. She's big on religious retreats, and the like.
My reason for writing this post is the diffuse sense of ressentment I harbour for our town's parish priest. He welcomed my friend's mum's overblown piety, right at the beginning when it was causing trouble in her marriage. In a town full of not-so-religious nominals, he was thrilled to encounter some of this full-scale devotional stuff that you encounter only in the older generations, or within the secluded atmosphere of a seminary. So he encouraged the zillions masses, the holy water and the retreats.
I have a massive fondness for the priest my friend and I grew up with, but he had been replaced by this new guy. I think that the original priest, who was from the area and knew his parishioner's stories, would have acted very differently. He would have kept my friend's mum from all this devotional nonsense because he also knew her husband, liked him and understood him. This overblown zealotry destroys families. As it happens, families close to me.

Monday 15 September 2008

Humility goes out the window

About a week ago, I told H. that one of his dissertation's key concepts had not been originated by the trendy British pastor who popularised it, but by an obscure feminist theologian back in the eighties. And I was right.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Concise quote of the day

We often choose peace over justice, to be sure, but they are not the same. To confuse them is simply to invite passive injustice. -Judith Sklar in The Faces of Injustice.

Monday 8 September 2008

Holloway on postmodern complexity

Complexity becomes the great alibi, both scientifically and morally. The world is so complex that we can think of it only in terms of fragmented narratives or, much more common in spite of the post-modernist fashion, in terms of positive and positivist case studies. The world is so complex that I cannot accept any moral responsibility for its development. Morality retracts: morality is about being good to the people around me, beyond that immediate circle the world is too complex, the relation between actions and consequences too complicated. When I stop my car at the traffic lights (for most academics in Mexico are of the car-driving class), I give (or do not give) a peso to the people begging there, but I do not ask what it is about the organisation of the world that creates more and more misery and how that organisation can be changed. That sort of question has become both morally and scientifically ridiculous. What is the point of asking it when we know that there is no answer?
- John Holloway, in Zapatismo and the Social Sciences.

Thursday 4 September 2008

The wealth you inherit and the people you can depend on

In a previous post, I was reflecting on the movie City of Joy, and observing that the protagonist, Dr. Max, could not undo his privilege. For if he ever got in trouble, if he ever wanted to get out, help (i.e. his family and friends) would only be a phone call away.

I’ve heard of guys who became priests because money was not a concern (yet I'm not in their head, and I hope I'm wrong). They did not need to make a good salary because their family was independently wealthy. So if they were quite churchy and they liked theology and singing hymns, they could just go for it. They could afford to make little money because they were set to inherit a lot of it anyway. If that wasn’t disturbing enough, they would also go through life thinking that they have made an enormous, painful sacrifice by not pursuing a more lucrative career: all this great earning potential they’ve given up!

But at the end of the day I’m in the same boat, because I too have a very supportive family and I too will one day inherit their accumulated wealth. I would like to think that I won’t touch it with a bargepole but we’re not there yet. And meanwhile, I will probably never be truly vulnerable. I don’t need to build bigger barns; my family does it for me. But since I already benefit from the “security” they created, it would be hypocritical to affirm that I don’t put my trust in riches.

This moneyed piety is getting on my nerves. I need more words and more concepts for the things I observe and, stupidly, I rely on Google. Google didn’t find fuck about the “revolutionary ethos”, and it didn’t find anything about “moneyed piety” either. Apart from poserorprophet (where I got the concept from to begin with) and one loony whose prose doesn’t make sense. Rats. I’m going to have to do the conceptualising on my own.

Monday 1 September 2008

I miss you

As is apparent from these pages, I've spent the last couple of months getting pretty mistrustful of God for not stepping in more against human suffering. But once again Nakedpastor captured my sentiment better than I did. David posted this twenty days ago and it has stayed with me since.
Edit (Sept. 2nd): Today, I was browsing my enormous pile of notes in order to further enrich my thesis narrative. I had condensed all my findings into soundbites, and then weaved the soundbites into storylines, so it had been a while since I had actually worked with my primary notes.
I liked working with my notes again. This is stuff that was gathered between October 2005 and October 2006, so it reminded me of the person I was then. By chance I found an old to-do-list on which I'd collected very valuable information. That info was easily retrievable elsewhere, but it would have taken some time.
So I was pleased. Handel's messiah pleased. For fun I played the hallelujah chorus on Deezer. It had the same effect. I used to love Handel and listen to it quite a bit, but I haven't done so in a couple of years. And like my notes, it transported me back a few years, when I wasn't mistrustful and cynical and lost. It's like the "system restore" function on a computer, I get to go back to the configuration as it was at a point in the past. Me two years ago, who would wake up and feel like singing to God all day long. This is weird.

Meet thy neighbour

We have never met H’s neighbour. There were some stories circulating at the pub that he is a bit weird, that his daughter smokes quite a lot of pot and that once, last year, they had some problems with rats. Don’t get me wrong, we are not being cautious or keeping to ourselves, if we had even bumped into him we would have said hello, we just never saw him (or at least I never did).
Last week a friend of the neighbour’s daughter gave H. a bit more background. The man had been a successful academic, but was involved in a car accident that killed his wife when the daughter was a baby. He never recovered and basically began to drink. That was more than 25 years ago.

Oh God, I thought. This situation clearly warranted a lot of accompaniment before it got out of hand. Why did his community let that happen? Twenty five years of isolation and alcohol addiction? And where were the bloody Christians?
They were trapped in liberal norms that warrant that we simply don’t get involved in strangers’ lives. Trapped in a neoliberal panopticon of sorts. Trapped in a dis-membered church. They were just as isolated as he was.

And I too am trapped in these norms. I too operate within their bounds. Sometimes I try to budge these norms a bit, I try to be approachable. If people want my company, they can have it. But I’d still feel weird knocking on this guy’s door. I feel compelled to function within the realm of what’s expected.
Incidentally, I think that this might be one of the reasons why Western Christians "worry" so much about the homeless. The homeless’ plight is highly visible; it seems to call for immediate action. When travelling to remote places in the countryside, you’ll find that socially-minded people "worry" about the inner-city ghettos. The visible poverty functions as a reminder that we should be doing more to help.
But the sad truth is that we simply don’t have fellowship at all, within or outside the church. Without fellowship, the visible poverty is the only one we’ll see, and the only one we’ll seek to intervene against.

If you’ve been following this blog for a little while you’ll have gathered that my favourite sport these days is to communicate to “the mainstream church” exactly what I think of it. So I wondered, what was the mainstream church going to do in our neighbour’s case?
Turns out that it doesn’t take all that much for the church to be interested in your fate, but they need to know about you, and they also need a half-decent reason to suppose that you would welcome their help.
All it actually takes for people to get a visit from their chaplain when –say- they’re in hospital is to specify on a form that their religious affiliation is Anglican, or Catholic, or Presbyterian or whatever. Similarly, if they’ve seen you in church maybe just a couple of times, and someone informs them of the stuff you’re going through, they can (and will) get in touch. In its own clumsy ways, the mainstream church is also trying to be present and to not let people face these kinds of tragedies on their own.

But at the end of the day, what worries me is that I don’t have a clue how to communicate with H’s neighbour without breaching the usual social norms of polite indifference.

Sunday 31 August 2008

All you need is love...

I’d been calling H. a fatass-capitalist-placator-of-bourgeois-souls for the past six months. He actually agrees. And then he calls me a champagne-socialist-teacher-of-bourgeois-kids. Fair enough.

Sunday 24 August 2008

Don’t you tell me what to think! A few thoughts on Zizek’s last oeuvre

So I’m back from the Quaker meeting. Today, a woman stood up and ministered in the following way: “What I really like in Quakers is that they don’t force me to believe things that I don’t believe in, like, you know, God having a white beard and Jesus physically rising from the dead”.
Today was a bit of a popcorn fest, which in Quaker parlance means that plenty of the attendees pop up with something to say. About six or seven people shared similar views: “yeah, I hate it when Christians from other denominations tell me what to think”.
I hadn’t been to a Quaker meeting in a while and the thing that struck me most is that they haven’t moved one bit in the last six months. Six months ago, a number of spiritual refugees from various denominations were saying the exact same things and everybody was nodding along.

The first thing that came to my mind was “Gawd their theology is bad!”. See, they don’t really mean it with God having a white beard and all that. But these cute little childish tropes hide the fact that they don’t know that much more.
I know it because I do it too. Pretending to be more stupid than I am is a way to communicate to others to please not probe me too much on a given topic. Behind those sibylline remarks is a gapping hole of misunderstanding and indifference. As someone who is sometimes involved in other expressions of church I resent the placation of their indifference. Making stupid comments about the white beard of God is like shouting to my face: I couldn’t care less what Christians believe, I’ve never bothered finding out, and that’s why I’m here among you tolerant Quakers who let me believe what I want.

The striking thing, though, is the amount of emotion that was involved in these "I want to believe what I want" statements. Seriously, the woman was feeling so strongly, it was almost like a tantrum: “Let me believe what I want, don’t tell me what to think, don’t tell me what to think!”. I did not argue with her, but I would like to venture the thought that in fact, she did yearn for something more. She has spent the last two years of her life becoming free, and now what? Maybe she needs to become freer still and self-actualize more or some other crap along these lines.

One of the passage that struck me most in Zizek’s tome is the passage about the fascination that the “free” individuals have for what they think is real faith. I went through a bit of a revival of my own faith last year. I’d found some folks whose thoughts echoed mine and I tried to be faithful to that truth. I regularly bawled people out on things faith-related. And boy did they love it!
After a short while, I began to feel a bit reflexive about this parasitic relationship. I wondered how much of me was morphing into a poser. We were parasiting each other, they consumed my enthusiasm while I consumed their fascination. In a cultural critique of Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie “Stalker”, Zizek describes this parasitic relationship in those terms:

What if Stalker, far from directly believing, manipulates, feigns belief, in order to fascinate the intellectuals he brings to the Zone, arousing in them the prospect of belief? What if far from being a direct believer, he assumes the role of a subject supposed to believe for the eyes of the decadent intellectual observers? What if the truly naive position is that of the intellectual spectator, of his fascination with Stalker's naïve belief? And what if the same goes for Tarkovsky himself, who —far from being the authentic Orthodox believer in contrast to Western skepticism— acts out this role in order to fascinate the Western intellectual public?

Hell, I’m not a super believer! My grandmother died of one of the most horrible degenerative illnesses on the planet. And I’m not impressed with tsunamis and earthquakes that kill children in agonising pain while God doesn’t seem to lift a finger. I believe against reason, in an experiential sort of way. One of my favourite blogger lost her husband to aneurism a couple of years ago. She is 40 and has three children; one of them was a baby when his father died. She hopes that there is no God. She really hopes that there is no God, because if God is real she hates Him so bad she could spend eternity hating Him. She’d rather there was no god than a God she would loathe. I can understand that.
And still faith fascinates. It fascinates precisely the free individuals who endlessly reassert that nobody has a right to tell them what to do. It fascinates those who are passionate about being left to think for themselves. I didn’t realise how prevalent this ideology was until about a month ago, when I got into a very heated argument on yet another blog. On that occasion, I got in touch with the blogger telling her that it was irresponsible to depict a victim of rape liking what was happening to her, especially on a mainstream support (she was writing a series of short stories to be published at a later stage, and this was one of them). She got back to me with the now habitual stance of “DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!”.
She asked me to preface all of my comments with a statement sounding like this: “personally, I think that it could be perceived as offensive by some people, but that’s just me. Other people think differently and, at the end of the day, everybody is entitled to their own opinions”. I disagreed. I reclaimed the right to speak in absolutes and reasserted that what she was doing was objectively wrong. She then proceeded to reframe me as if I was a five year-old who had yet to learn the basic principles of tolerance and anger management.

That’s it. Nobody can speak in absolutes anymore. In this postmodern world speaking in absolutes is a form of “terrorism”. Terror is wanting someone else to change the way they think. Zizek illustrates this point with the movie "Derailed" in which Jennifer Aniston tells Clive Owen that she doesn’t just want him to do the dishes, she wants him to want to do the dishes. That’s the way in which Zizek understands terror.

The book goes on reviewing historical accounts of terror, particularly Robespierre’s views. Robespierre wanted everyone to subscribe to revolutionary ideals. He wanted people to want to be revolutionaries. When he failed, that’s when the real physical terror entered the picture. Zizek thinks that all revolutionary violence is a failure. A failure to make people want to be revolutionaries. This is also the failure of Che Guevara.
Still Zizek argues that "while these phenomena were, each in its own way, a historical failure and monstrosity [...] this is not the whole truth: there was in each of them a redemptive moment which gets lost in the liberal-democratic rejection and it is crucial to isolate this moment".
So I got interested. Every time I go to church I feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite. That’s why I’m interested in those “God against the world” theories. Maybe there’s a revolutionary movement somewhere that would turn me into something less hypocritical. So I googled “revolutionary ethos” hoping to find some bullet points that would tell me what the revolutionary ethos was. I found nothing. Noone was describing a revolutionary ethos anywhere. Noone was laying out how they were being faithful to the Event of their encounter with a life-changing phenomenon.

So now, what are we left with? The freedom to think what we want, or the terror to tell others what to think? Now, whenever I think of the first option, I’ll think of that woman in the Quaker meeting who’s been trying to be free from people telling her what to think. I’ll remember the fact that she’s been saying this for years. I’ll remember that she was nearly in tears with frustration: “don’t tell me what to think, don’t tell me what to think!”.
Truth of the matter she is ultimately disempowered. She is alone, imprisoned in the single cell of her freedom to think. One of my favourite quotes by Stanley Hauerwas is a passage in which he has a go at the movie "Dead Poets Society" and argues that the freedom to think what you want is a form of oppression too:
It is an entertaining, popular movie that appeals to our moral sensibilities. The movie depicts a young and creative teacher battling what appears to be the unthinking authoritarianism of the school as well as his students' (at first) uncomprehending resistance to his teaching method. The young teacher, whose subject is romantic poetry, which may or may not be all that important, takes as his primary pedagogical task helping his students think for themselves. We watch him slowly awaken one student after another to the possibility of their own talents and potential. At the end, even though he has been fired by the school, we are thrilled as his students find the ability to stand against authority, to think for themselves. This movie seems to be a wonderful testimony to the independence of spirit that democracies putatively want to encourage. Yet I can think of no more conformist message in liberal societies than the idea that students should learn to think for themselves. What must be said is that most students in our society do not have minds well enough trained to think. A central pedagogical task is to tell students that their problem is that they do not have minds worth making up. (From this website)
We gave up the terror of telling people what to think. How many times have we heard the cliché that we can’t change people, it’s got to come from them? So we told them nothing. We hoped that they would find the commitment to justice within their own heart. And they didn’t. They just got more self-absorbed. Bring back “terrorism”! Tell people what to think! Sure, this might raise a few knee-jerk reactions. But ideas take time to mature. This is not a call for everyone to mindlessly follow their leaders. This is an appeal for the terrorism of absolutes. Zizek wants to be able to talk in absolutes again.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Waking up before dawn

In the north of England, during the summer you hate dawn. It wakes you up crazy bright at 4am unless you have very good quality curtains. If you wake up before dawn, suddenly it feels like winter, or at least like then end of summer. There is this slight period of readjustment: hang on, it's dark, but it's summer right? Okay, maybe the end of summer. Those 2-3 weeks which reek of back to school.
That's the time of year I'd spend at my grandparents, usually after a whole month and a half of getting sunburnt on the beach. We'd make pancakes and blackberry jam. That's the time of year they'd catch up with my life, find out about my love life and later share my excitement when I was off to University for the first time. My mum always tried to stay as long as possible. Sometimes there was barely a day of turnover before we were back at school. I miss them like mad.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

In praise of a (situated) non-decision

Yesterday I read about yet another catholic saint. Eugenie became a nun at 20. She was very obedient, and very good at teaching schoolchildren. She died at 28 from TB. One guy with lung cancer invoked her a couple of years after she died and he recovered miraculously. She was beatified and might be canonized at some point in the future. If she had lived longer, who knows, she might even have founded a new monastic order. But that doesn’t matter; she was faithful and dutiful in the little things. Tell you what: most catholic saints are boring.

But that is of little concern to us. In all likelihood, I will never share the desperate plight of millions. How do you get yourself into that position to start with? This is why the movie City of Joy is the closest thing I know to sainthood as I would define it. It happens despite the guy. He has no intention of being a hero but he becomes one because, despite himself, he cares for some of the inhabitants of the City of Joy. When they reproach him they say: “you are not one of us, we cannot trust you, you are a rootless tree, if things get bad you can go back to your privileges, we have to live with the consequences, you don’t”. At that moment, even though he’s been around for years, he knows they are telling the truth.
There isn’t a point at which he bites the bullet and decides to stay, but he never does leave. His friends' reproach stays with him until the end. He is and remains privileged because he could leave them. At the end, it is the people from the City of Joy who incrementally, warily, begin to adopt him. All he’s got to do is to postpone his going home until he finds that he doesn’t want to go home any more. All he’s got to do is to not choose to leave. Maybe true heroism means burning your bridges once and for all, destroying your privileges as much as you can. And stil Dr Max's stance, cowardly as it may be, is also valuable. He ends up staying because of love.

Monday 18 August 2008

How "edgy" can your advertising get?

Part of me does not want this junk on my little blue blog, but seriously, WTF?
Wrangler Jeans' ads features the bodies of dead women, with the slogan: we are animals.
I seriously hope this shit gets banned. Come on Regulatory Nation State, you can do this!

Sunday 17 August 2008

On playing in the woods and walking on bridges

Before my Grandfather died, my mum had always wanted to go back to Brittany one day. She lives in Alsace, where I grew up. Just recently, she realised that she could not give up her job, and that in all likelihood she would remain in Alsace for a while.
We live right on the border to Germany. When I was a kid we'd go to Karlsruhe, the next big city, to do some shopping. We also knew the villages immediately across the border for their ice-cream parlours and their French-German gymnastics classes, but we'd never explored them in much depth. The area is quite beautiful, with lots and lots of artificial lakes. So today, I was spying on Google Earth to see if I could find a good waterfront pub on the other side. I already know the ones on the French side and I get bored of them.
Google Earth sometimes has random photos, and I recognised pretty much everything. I clicked on one. It was a picture of the uneven terrain right in the forest. I always loved these uneven terrains as a kid. They were fun to play around. On Easter morning, several families would join together for a walk. The parents had been hiding tons of Easter eggs the day before and designed some "challenges" for the kids. Once they had made some floating boats out of styrofoam. These were loaded with the most desirable chocolate eggs on them and we had to fish them out with a hook.
So I clicked on one photo, and up popped that uneven terrain, it's so typical of where I'm from. I never asked where it came from. As we all know, nature is full of oddities. Until the title of the photo alerted me to the fact that these were war trenches. The kind you hear about in WW1 movies. To me they only looked like childhood challenges as in "can you jump over that hole?" Or like holes filled with water from which to recover little boats with chocolate eggs on them.
Back in 2003 I was in Strasbourg on November 11th. Since it's a national holiday in France everything was closed. I had meant to get my teeth checked for a while, so I thought: hell, I'll just pop over to Germany. I walked. I crossed the Rhine on the pedestrian bridge. Right in the middle of the bridge the weirdness of the situation dawned on me: "You are crossing the Rhine on foot to get your teeth checked in Germany, on November the 11th". I stood there, right in the middle of the Rhine. I didn't know whether it was incredibly sad or incredibly joyful. I settled for joyful and I held back my tears. The dentist checked my teeth -no problem there-, I got to the shop to get some German brand products which I like, and I walked right back.
If you'd like to see the photos I'm talking about look for Neuburg am Rhein on Google Earth and then venture into the forest on the top left corner for the pics. You can see the pedestrian bridge in Strasbourg here.

Thursday 7 August 2008

"Telling" people about God?

Twenty years after everybody else, I’ve finally understood the meaning of incarnational proclamation. Yesterday, after a very long night at the office, I walked towards our local pub, looking forward to meeting up with H. I was still singing along to the cosy Iron and Wine tunes, I grabbed a pint, and engaged with whoever was there.
At the pub, the “God” topic sometimes pops up. I’ve no idea whether it is because H. (an Anglican priest) is there, or whether it would anyway. A bit of both I guess. If anything, H.’s presence just makes the discussion a bit more awkward, as people wonder what he’s thinking and they tend to watch themselves a bit.

So there I was, tired but happy. I buy H. and his friend a pint, and then go and speak to some randoms, I like to let them have their bloke time. I'm staring down my pint, being moderately friendly to the regular semi-strangers I sort-of-know. I was tired and content to be left on my own to think. And then the “God topic” pops out in someone else’s conversation. Steve is the guy I describe as potentially abusive in the comments to this post. Suddenly, out of the blue, Steve states very loudly “God forgives everybody, even sinners like me”.

Right then, Steve’s statement is blood-curdling and makes me want to self-combust. For a second, it makes me want to not be there, it makes me want to stop living. There is so much pain and so much fear in Steve’s tone. But there is nothing wrong with the statement itself. In fact the decent-type Christians at the bar sort of mumble and approve. What is there here to disapprove?

And finally I understand. Whoever the fuck told Steve that stuff without loving him? Who made these words so hollow that they’re not believed? How come he’s not encountered the forgiveness he talks about? I felt like I was never going to "tell" the Gospel to anyone again. If that’s the effect then fuck “telling”. Love first damnit! The Gospel will tell itself when it’s ready.

Wednesday 6 August 2008

There's a love song

Will you say when I’m gone away
'Your father’s body was judgement day
We both dove and rose to the riverside

Iron and Wine, Each Coming Night
Full lyrics here Listen to it here

Life in the mainstream: Alzheimer's

They got 5 televisions In a house built for 3
Look up on that fake fireplace
You know the bucktoothed boy's me
See that wood paneled room'
That's where I learned to drink
See that hole in the wall'
That was seagrams I think

That tree was a goal post
That bathroom it was a shroud
That closet it was a phone booth
That mirror was a crowd
See that guy with the bad knees
And his heart on his sleeve'
Watch him slip me ten dollar
When it comes time to leave

It's been five years and some change
And this world is getting so strange
But this house smells just the same
But my mom can't remember my name

I sit on her bed and kiss right behind the ear
She calls out for a dog that's been dead for a year
I say how is it going'
Like I didn't know
Hold on to both of her hands too afraid to let her go
And five times exactly no more or no less
She says how you been eating boy'
I say, okay I guess
In this room where she made me each day she grows weak
She flips on the Golden Girls and the first tear hits my cheek
It's been five years

Lyrics by Chocolate Genius

World's worst Bible interpretation, the competition goes on...

Here is an exegesis of Luke 6: 20-26 (c.f. previous post):

First Part: it means that the rich are indeed blessed but that this blessedness extends even to the poor.

Second Part: Luke’s narrative develops divine reversal quite a lot, that’s just another instance of it. My guess is that the Lukean community must have felt pretty downtrodden and oppressed to feel the need to develop such themes.